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Oil painting on canvas. A group of cheering men stands over four others who lie on the rocky ground. All of the subjects wear white t-shirts and blue shorts, and most beam with the same expression: eyes closed, mouth wide open.

Oil painting on canvas. A group of cheering men stands over four others who lie on the rocky ground. All of the subjects wear white t-shirts and blue shorts, and most beam with the same expression: eyes closed, mouth wide open.

Oil painting on canvas. A group of cheering men stands over four others who lie on the rocky ground. All of the subjects wear white t-shirts and blue shorts, and most beam with the same expression: eyes closed, mouth wide open.

M+ Sigg Collection, Hong Kong. By donation, © Yue Minjun

On View

Sigg Galleries, 204

Yue Minjun 岳敏君

La Liberté Guidant le Peuple 自由引導人民前進

1995

A group of men in dull, identical clothes laugh hysterically, likely in self-mockery. They all bear an uncanny resemblance to the artist Yue Minjun. Some of them stride forward in excitement amid the smoke of gunpowder, while others lie fallen on the ground. Yue appropriates the composition and title of the French painting Liberty Leading the People (1830). He replaces the background and the valiant Parisians of the revolution with a modern cityscape and a group of absurd ‘laughing men’, giving the work a cynical tone.

Details

Object Number:

2012.1321

Object Type:

Related Makers:

Yue Minjun (Artist)

Medium:

oil on canvas

Date:

1995

Dimensions:

overall: 249 × 360 cm

Collection:

M+ Sigg Collection

Credit Line:

M+ Sigg Collection, Hong Kong. By donation

Copyright:

© Yue Minjun

About the Maker:

Yue Minjun (born 1962, Daqing) graduated from Heibei Normal University in 1989. He is a major figure of the Cynical Realism movement, known for his iconic ‘laughing man’. This image illustrates the irony and boredom of Chinese society during the rise of consumerism and economic reform in the early 1990s. Yue lives and works in Beijing.

Yue Minjun Painting Visual Art M+ Sigg Collection

M+ Exhibition History

M+ Sigg Collection: Another Story, 22 September 2022 to Now
M+ Sigg Collection: Four Decades of Chinese Contemporary Art, 23 February 2016 to 05 April 2016

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